Intergenerational Reflections on Lifestyle, Food Security, and Jewish Activism (Part II)

This post is the second in a two-part series about one woman’s experiences within the Jewish food movement. To read the first part, click here. Next week, we will announce the members of the Pursue food justice cohort who will be participating in one of the movement’s major events, the Hazon Food Conference - stay tuned!

In Tucson, beginning in 2001, I lived in a cohousing community and joined a CSA, enjoying weeding on the 1-acre farm that fed 30 households each season with my baby boy playing by my side, hands in the dirt, munching from a fresh strawberry patch. Public schools designated outdoor space for school gardens, the produce to be used for school lunches. The Farmacy Garden was an amazing project of homeless people growing medicinal plants, enabling them to care for their own ailments when possible.

Now that my baby is 12 years old and I have three little ones, my day job and familial responsibilities make maintaining our garden at home next to impossible. We plant vegetables and fruits now and then, sometimes from seed, and take care to water together. At times we have made a quick project out of harvesting parsley from the yard, cleaning it, checking it for bugs (assuring its kosher status), and throwing it into a soup on the stove together. Almost every Friday afternoon I send my big boy out to fetch some rosemary from the yard for the chicken that will be served at our Shabbas table. I find ways for my kids to interact in real time with the produce of the land as it nourishes our bodies. I have finally decided to turn some more yard space into a garden in hopes of having it become part of an urban CSA.

Every Friday night and Saturday afternoon as we observe the Sabbath, my family and community experience many benefits around meal times. Particularly for us, Saturday afternoon after the Torah reading, we participate in or host a second Shabbat meal. The table becomes a central altar for our Jewish community relationships among the presence of our highest selves. In our Berkeley, CA community, many Shabbat tables are plentiful with fresh and roasted local organic foods. Around these tables together, we utter our ancient blessings, we praise G-d, we sing traditional songs that honor the holy gift of the Sabbath – the feminine crown of the masculine work week, the crowning ormanent of Creation.

Jewish Food Movement

The emergence of the Jewish food movement has been no less than a prayer answered. Over a decade ago when I got involved during the early days of COEJL, I brought my Earth First! background with me and set up an Apache-Jewish cultural exchange which explored the spiritual existence of Jews and Apaches and the importance of the Earth in both traditions. It was during this time of my life that I was acquiring and distributing indigenous heirloom seeds among permaculturists, gardeners, and Native American farmers.

Last year, months after I devised a grand concept for a coexistence center based in Berkeley with Green Arts, urban agriculture, and inter-generational/inter-cultural participatory arts programs at its core, I was ecstatic to learn that Urban Adamah was coming to Berkeley. From introducing local Jewish organizations and city council/leaders to the new entity, to supporting its social media capacity, to finding items to fulfill its wish list, and sending my kids to its summer camp, I am determined to see this new Jewish eco-organization on urban agriculture succeed in my town.

Since this past December when my family was awarded a scholarship to attend the Hazon Food Conference, I have felt truly honored to be part of this international organization, the largest Jewish environmental group in the world. It is my pleasure to be part of this network of Jewish people who share the vision of land-based agricultural communities living in balance with the Earth.

Kids growing up amongst our Jewish environmental network are being raised as conscious people. They are an integral part of the holistic intergenerational experience that our communities are building.

As a woman, I look forward to the Hazon conferences as a place to connect with other Jewish women who are oriented toward our spiritual work in the world from a traditional perspective. After I discovered ecofeminism in the early ’90s, and then thru cultural exchanges with Native Americans whose cultural preservation I was actively supporting as part of my environmental activism, I was driven to explore the indigenous experience of the Jewish people as a Jewess. Today I am a doula and founder of Imeinu Birth Collective, a group of Jewish women and friends who are serving Jewish and non-Jewish ladies at all stages of a woman’s life cycle.

I want to learn the needs and the issues that the women in our Jewish environmental networks are facing, and see how we can develop our awareness and our voice in representing femininity in all its strength, by the framework of our ancient understandings which we have inherited through the oral tradition. I believe that the wellness of women across Jewish denominations will reflect and guide the success of our Jewish environmental movement, but we need to speak with and support each other as women to realize our potential.

Thinking back to what my grandparents’ lives were like a century ago, fruit-carts and local kosher chicken are back in style. Beyond the industrial era, our generation is reclaiming Jewish earthly spirituality alongside simple living that was lost to oppression and assimilation over centuries. Through practices like the mikva and traditional blessings which intersect with our ancient communal structures based in Torah such as tzedakah, Shabbas meals and shmita, we are remembering the keys to living in balance in this physical world which are central to the spiritual tradition of our heritage. Our Jewish environmental movement’s vision for tikkun feels a breath away.

Wendy Kenin is on the Planning Committee for the August 2011 Hazon Food Conference in Davis, California. She is Community Engagement Specialist at UpStart Bay Area. You can read her full bio on UpStart’s website.

Tagged as: food justice